Making Money From News Aimed at Gen Z Is Easier Said Than Done

In late 2020, a news start-up began pitching investors on a bold vision: By creating content native to social media for Gen Z audiences — and later acquiring brands like The Daily Mail — the company would begin to create “the Amazon of News” within five years.

“We must create a movement,” read a pitch deck for the company viewed by The New York Times. “A movement hungry for the facts and thirsty for the truth.”

That company, which eventually became known as The News Movement, was co-founded by Will Lewis, a media executive who was named chief executive of The Washington Post last year.

In early June, Mr. Lewis announced a new division in the newsroom that would focus in part on “social media journalism” to help turn around its ailing finances. The announcement, made alongside the news that the paper’s executive editor was leaving, ultimately led to internal strife and questions about Mr. Lewis’s leadership and ethics.

Yet The News Movement may provide a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to make money from the oceans of viewers who consume news on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Since it was founded in 2021, The News Movement has struggled to wring profits from its more than one million followers on social media, according to interviews with current and former employees and documents obtained by The Times. In 2023, Mr. Lewis’s last year at the company, it lost millions of dollars and slashed its staff, and this year it did not renew an important partnership with The Associated Press. (Mr. Lewis still holds an undisclosed stake in The News Movement.)